Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Take an old engine, tack on a new storyline, and what do you get? A weak game that's fun to play.

Before we get started, I should let you know that I'm a huge fan of the Might and Magic series. I've waited for each game in the set impatiently, pausing only to briefly examine the box before tearing in and losing myself in the rich game world. New World's RPGs have always been long, well written, and pretty damn addictive. The newest title is no exception. With For Blood and Honor, the venerable development house has created an old-school RPG that gives players an amount of freedom that they've never really had before ¿ the freedom to choose between good and evil. Sadly, the company's decision to retool the Might and Magic VI engine rather than putting together something new really hurts the game in an era where RPGs are once again required to be competitive.

As usual, Might and Magic VII's story is a deep one, with loads of plot twists to keep the whole thing from slipping into a predictable Tolkienesque rehash. As you start the game, Catherine Gryphonheart has taken over the throne of her father (who has been transformed into a lich by the Necromancer's guild) and is ruling over the kingdom of Erathia. The king of the Elves has also established his own domain to the north in the lands of Avlee and the Tularean Forest. Harmondale, a very small little domain squeezed in-between has suffered from the constant tension between these two major powers (the Dwarves, to the south in Barrow Downs keep pretty much to themselves) and has recently fallen to a band of marauding goblins. While all of this may sound interesting, it shouldn't really matter all that much to a hearty band of adventurers, right? Wrong. After winning a prize offered by Lord Markham, a wealthy landowner, you will find yourself the Lord of Castle Harmondale and the surrounding lands. Suddenly all of Erathia's problems affect you and the people who depend on you in a very real way.

Like the rest of the series, For Blood and Honor breaks all of the action into small sub-quests that players can choose to tackle in any order they like. The first order of business will be to clear all of the goblins out of your new home. After this is accomplished, Castle Harmondale's steward will give you an overview of Harmondale's current political situation and you'll be ready to set out into the world. After you've managed to accomplish some of your major goals, like getting the Dwarves to help you repair your castle (Goblins don't keep the cleanest house) and stopping an all out war between the Elves and the Humans, you'll be selected to pick which party, the Keepers of Light or Dark, gets to act as mediator in the peace talks between the Humans and Elves. This is a major breaking point in the game, and you decision will affect the way the rest of the game plays out.

Your choice will not only affect the way the story is told, but it also has a major impact on the game itself as well. Once you've selected the Light or the Dark, your entire interface will change to reflect that decision. Subquests are often the same in either case, but will reflect the side you are now on. For example, in order for your light characters to become Heroes, you must rescue a young lady who was kidnapped from Castle Steadwick. If you have chosen evil, your quest (to become a Villain rather than a Hero) will be to kidnap that same young woman from Castle Harmondale. The end result is a story that tends to follow the same rough pattern, but with different details seen from a different side. Eventually, either way you play, you'll discover the dark truth behind the trouble in Erathia. What you do about it is up to you...

With the storyline out of the way, there's not much to write about Might and Magic VII except that it's an awful lot like Might and Magic VI. The team took the same engine, most of the same art, and good bit of the same sound effects to create this sequel and it shows in a big way. With the exception of the branching storyline and the new card game, the only real difference you're going to notice is the addition of a movement phase to the turn based combat. Since most of you (you didn't think I knew your secrets did you?) are jumping out of turn based mode to run away to missile distance again, even this doesn't really have much impact on the way the game plays. "Wait a minute," you say, "did you say something about a card game?" Yep, once you discover a special deck during gameplay, you'll be able to enter any tavern in Erathia and play a cool new Magic the Gathering style card game. Every town has its own rules, and you'll have to develop independent strategies for each one if you plan to win. The card game is absolutely addictive, and I found myself playing for hours even when I didn't have to. It's a great way to break up long play blocks without actually having to go outside.

The engine really shows its age in the way the game looks. Although it's a lot like comparing apples and oranges, it really does seem that RPG fans could expect the same level of detail showed in Fallout 2 or Baldur's Gate. If you argue that Might and Magic VII shouldn't be judged by these standards since its a first person game, then you have to wonder why the game doesn't come a little bit closer to the look of an Unreal or a Quake III. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that gameplay is far more important than graphics, but if you're going to stare at a screen for hundreds of hours, you should have something better to look at. On the plus side here, New World has added a smoothing routine that does take the edge off the grainy textures that were all over the last title.

Which brings us to the sound. The game's soundtrack is actually pretty good, but after a few hours, you won't really hear it anymore. What you will hear is a loud fanfare every time you enter turn-based combat, and another every time you exit it. While this was also in Might and Magic VI, I guess I never noticed just how annoying it was. After a couple of weeks of jumping in and out of combat, with the volume turned up just loud enough for me to tell what was going on, everyone in the office wanted to kill me (more than they usually do). Add this to the dated sound effects used for just about every other action in the game (remember that irritating teleport noise?) and you've got an auditory assault that'll have speakers all over the country going unused. Once again, this doesn't actually hurt the gameplay value, but if I'm going to spend as much time with a title as I had to spend with this game, it should have soothing tunes to keep me entertained.

While the game plays for the most part like its predecessor, there are a couple of annoying quirks that get pretty annoying after a few hours. First off, creatures that are in your line of sight will often be identified as a tree (meaning you can't do a quick 'click' attack) even when they aren't behind a tree. You'll spend a lot of your time trying to find an angle where you'll actually be able to hit foes that are right in front of you. Next off, I had a good bit of trouble with NPCs and town layouts. When you're walking in a town and an NPC gets in your way, you'll bump into him. While this isn't all that much trouble in the beginning villages, which are very open (you can just walk around them), it becomes a real pain in the ass in some of the more advanced cities. In one city, if you try to walk around, you can fall to your death, in another you'll fall into molten lava. The worst case, the Dwarven City, doesn't even offer these alternatives, you just have to wait until they randomly decide to wander out of your way. Let me tell you, this can be a loooooong time. The last gripe I have about the game is its inconsistent note taking. Like the earlier games in the series, Might and Magic VII keeps notes for you on almost every topic. It lets you know which potions have which effects, it lets you know what current quests you have, it even tells you where you can find the Masters and Grandmasters of different skills. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't let you know all of the details. On one quest, in which you are required to pick up different pieces of a Golem and then reanimate it, it doesn't bother to tell you which pieces you have collected and which you haven't. If you've been rebuilding this creature as you find the pieces, you suddenly realize that you have no idea how many pieces are left to go, and which pieces those are. Since this is a quest that enables your wizard to reach a higher level of spell mastery, it's pretty important knowledge to have. There are actually a couple of instances like this in which the computer notes simply don't give you enough information to complete your tasks. While the simple answer seems to be, "then take notes idiot," it's impossible to tell which tasks the auto-notes will give you full disclosure on and which ones they won't ahead of time.

With all of this said, I really did enjoy playing Might and Magic VII. It's a really long game with a great story, and for the most part, it plays pretty well. Better still, the forked storyline gives you a chance to go back and play the game again when your done. While there's no doubt that the game could have used a new and improved engine, this one does the job satisfactorily, and at least there's a lot more to look forward to when the next title ships. If you like old-school, play in your bathrobe for an entire weekend RPGs, then For Blood and Honor will keep you more than happy for weeks (and maybe even months). If, on the other hand, you're new to the RPG arena and are looking for a title with plenty of bells and whistles to keep you entertained, you may want to think twice before picking this one up.